


Happy To Have You

by kitster



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Also Sirius Swears, Alternate Timeline - 5th Year, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drarry Pre-Slash If You Squint, Gen, I Don't Even Know What This Timeline Is TBH, M/M, Wolfstar Raises Harry AU, really they're just friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 18:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12636318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitster/pseuds/kitster
Summary: In which Harry is reluctant to let Draco return home for the summer to live in a Voldemort-sympathetic household and Sirius has Feelings about it.





	Happy To Have You

**Author's Note:**

> So this is meant to take place at the end of Harry's fifth year. Let's just pretend that either fight in the Department of Mysteries hasn't happened yet, or it happened and everyone's fine. Either way, Sirius doesn't die in this Wolfstar Raises Harry AU that I spend way too much time thinking about for someone who doesn't actively ship Wolfstar.

_Moony,_

_Hi, how are you? I know I haven't written in forever, I'm sorry. I'm the world's worst godson, you don't have to tell me. Mostly I've been trying to think of the best way to ask this, and I figure the easiest way is probably just to ask you first and see if you can't find a way to ask Padfoot for me, too._

_So, you know how Malfoy..._ Draco _and I are friends now? Like, good friends, really kind of unexpectedly_ good _friends, actually. And I was thinking that, you know, it kind of seems almost_ wrong _after everything for him to have to go and spend the whole summer back at the manor with his dad and his dad's... friends. See, his dad has all these_ expectations _about him and about Voldemort, right, and Malfoy isn't... he's not, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, and_ I _don't want him to get hurt because of it. He hasn't told me much, and he doesn't like to talk about it and I reckon I can't blame him, but it sounds like things are getting bad._

 _Anyway, I was thinking that, maybe since it isn't especially safe to let Malfoy,_ Draco _, go home, that he could come and stay with us instead?_  


_Just, let me know, I guess, maybe sooner rather than later because I need time to figure something else out because I_ won't _let him go back to that house, Moony. I can't._

_-Harry_

* * *

 

James really would have been proud of him, Remus thought, not for the first time, as he read and re-read the letter, looking for quiet clues his godson's (rather deplorable, actually, dear God) syntax had left regarding the actual state of Draco Malfoy's homelife. He didn't have to look too hard, didn't have to stretch his imagination too far to think of what it would be like for the boy in a household beholden to the Dark Lord. After all, Sirius had gone through almost the exact same thing when they had been children. 

As it stood, Remus barely even had to consider it. Of _course_ Draco Malfoy should stay with them. Practically, one less potential Death Eater meant one less wand on the Dark Lord's side of the battlefield. Less practically, more troublingly considering his own godson's situation, Remus had never agreed with the idea of dragging _children_ , actual _children_ (no matter what Harry had to say about it,) into grown-up wars. 

Sirius, he was certain, would not be so easy to convince.  


Remus sighed and pushed away from the kitchen table, clutching the letter in one hand while he sought out Sirius in the living room where he was sprawled out on the sofa, one booted ( _booted,_ ) foot on the edge of _Remus's walnut coffee table_ where it seemed to permanently live whenever Sirius was within three feet of the thing. Really, after almost twenty years, Remus should be used to it but the throbbing nerve in his right eye clearly had a different conception.

"Hey Moons," the object of Remus's ire said off-handedly, flipping another page in his Witch Weekly, dragging his heel across the surface of the coffee table as he re-adjusted his position to peer up to where Remus hovered in the doorway.

Pick your battles, Remus. "Harry wrote," he said, instead of the litany of chastisements that hovered right on the edge of his tongue.

"'Bout time, the little shit." Sirius snapped the magazine closed and peered over at Remus through an eyeful of black hair, taking in the tense curve of his mouth and the wrinkle in his brow. "Everything okay?"

"Harry's fine," Remus said, and Sirius visibly relaxed. "Although I wouldn't go so far as to say _everything_ is fine. He's having a bit of an interpersonal problem and I thought that you, with your unique set of experiences might, be better poised to help him."

"It's that Malfoy kid, isn't it?" Sirius snarled and straightened, his boot giving one final scuff across the surface of the walnut before thudding dully against the floor. "I knew it, I told you, told you both that that snot-nosed, pinched, blonde little _fuck_ was _no good_ and--"

"That's enough, Sirius," Remus said, his tone cold enough that Sirius snapped his mouth shut. "You aren't all together wrong, but I suggest you reserve judgment until you've seen what Harry has to say." He passed the letter into Sirius's waiting hand and braced himself for the fit.

Sirius did not disappoint.

"Absolutely not!" he raged, slamming the letter down on the coffee table and standing up to pace furiously across the much-abused rug whose only crime had been to exist in Sirius's favorite ranting corner. "Not in my house, Remus, do you hear me? He may have pulled it over on you and Harry but he won't pull it over on me. He's looking for an in with the Order, I know he is! I know how his type operate. I know what that family is like! Bunch of sanctimonious, power-hungry, amoral _fucking racists_ who'd just as soon hand you over to the Dark Lord as stare down their pointy noses at you like the trash they think you are, just like--"

"Just like your family?" Remus supplied quietly.

He'd never seen Sirius deflate so quickly. For a moment, he stood frozen in place, shock etched across his dark features, before he staggered to the sofa and slumped back down onto it. Remus hesitated only a moment before crossing the room to sit at his side, pulling a hand into his own and giving it a little squeeze.

"James's son," Sirius managed, and if his voice was a little bit thick, Remus pretended not to notice. "Down to the fucking bone."

"He is," Remus agreed. "And Draco Malfoy is your cousin."

"First cousin, once removed," Sirius corrected automatically, although he didn't quite manage to hide the crack in his voice. "Don't rub it in."  


Remus sighed, running the pad of his thumb over the Sirius's knuckles. "I know this is difficult for you. Just... think about it, would you? I know you don't much like him but try to remember that his situation isn't so different from your own. You and he aren't so different. "

How could Sirius help but to remember?

* * *

  
"You really should have written, Prongs," Sirius said, the voice of reason for what must have been the first time in his life. "It really is kinda unfair for me to just show up. You gotta give 'em the opportunity to say no."

"I didn't want to give them the opportunity. Besides, they  _love_ you." James hefted his trunk over the threshold of the front door and kicked it across the living room floor to give Sirius room to do the same. "You're better off here and they know it." 

Sirius couldn't really argue with that. Still, he had this niggling feeling that maybe he and James had overplayed their hand. A Christmas holiday here and there was one thing. It was another thing entirely to have the put-out kid of a family of Voldemort sympathizers living under your roof full-time.

Mr. and Mrs. Potter followed the boys into the house a moment later, and the door closing behind them was the most foreboding thing Sirius had ever heard. 

"Euphemia," Mr. Potter said lightly.

Mrs. Potter clapped her hands together. "James, why don't take Sirius up to the guest room and help him get settled?" she said cheerfully. "Come on, Fleamont, let's leave the boys to their fun."

"C'mon, Pads." James said, getting hold of his trunk again and tasking himself with dragging it up the stairs far more quickly than someone his size should have been able to.

Sirius hesitated by his trunk for a moment, looking between it and the kitchen door before creeping ever-so-quietly across the room, drawing as near as he dared to listen in on the conversation on the other side. Mr. Potter's voice, low and firm, pierced through the quiet of the living room.

"...good idea, Euphemia? He's a nice enough boy, to be sure, but that _family_. Do we really want to risk--"

"What do we risk by forcing him to go back? You said it yourself, that _family_ , Fleamont. And you know how they've been treating him. You've seen them with him on the platform and, Merlin, that time we ran into them in Diagon Alley, do you remember? I thought I was going to have to take that awful woman down right there in the street!"

"Of course, I remember, but--"

"Things are getting worse. That... _Dark Lord_ is getting more and more powerful, gaining more and more followers every day. Do you really want to throw him back into that world? Do you really want to make him fight his way out of it?"

Mr. Potter's sigh was audible. "How do we know he isn't already in it?"

Sirius's flood of red-hot anger was as immediate as Mrs. Potter's resulting gasp. 

"Fleamont Potter, listen to yourself!" she cried furiously. "This is Sirius Black we are talking about! James's best friend, co-conspirator, and confidante. He's spent the last three Christmases in a row under our roof. We even brought him with us to Rome last summer! Are you really implying that this _boy_ , this _child_ , because that's all he is, Fleamont, is a _child_ , the same age as _our son_ , is a Death Eater? Tell me, were you born stupid or did it come upon you suddenly?"

Thank Merlin for Euphemia Potter. 

"I... suppose he's not a Death Eater," Mr. Potter said, sounding suitably chagrined, and Sirius thought he could _hear_ him wince. "No, I don't suppose he is. But--"

"But nothing. There isn't any reason why we can't take him in, and so we shall." Euphemia's tone was decisive and stubborn, and left no question in Sirius's mind where James's own stubborn streak had come from. "I don't want to hear anymore about it from you. I'm not going to stand here and listen to you argue with me over whether or not we're going to save this boy's life." 

There was an extended silence, in which Sirius could imagine Mrs. Potter's legendary glare was cutting holes through Mr. Potter's carefully cool exterior. 

"You're right, of course," he said with a sigh.

"I'm always right, darling," Mrs. Potter sniffed, her voice significantly closer than it had been before, and before Sirius could scurry away both she and Mr. Potter were pushing their way through the door into the living room. "Oh, Sirius," she exclaimed, concern and surprise at war in her tone. "We were just--"

"S'all right," Sirius said, shrugging inelegantly. "I get it. And Prongs really shoulda wrote."

All of a sudden, Mr. Potter's heavy hand came down on his shoulder, giving it a hard squeeze. "We're happy to have you, son." he said firmly, and Sirius couldn't help but to believe him. 

* * *

  
_Harry,_  


_As long as you promise to walk him, feed him, and clean up after him, we'd be happy to have the Malfoy kid for the summer._

_Go another two weeks without writing and see what happens, you little shit._

_-Padfoot_  


_(P.S. Your dad would be proud.)_


End file.
